Fix printing of whole-row Vars at top level of a SELECT targetlist.

Normally whole-row Vars are printed as "tabname.*".  However, that does not
work at top level of a targetlist, because per SQL standard the parser will
think that the "*" should result in column-by-column expansion; which is
not at all what a whole-row Var implies.  We used to just print the table
name in such cases, which works most of the time; but it fails if the table
name matches a column name available anywhere in the FROM clause.  This
could lead for instance to a view being interpreted differently after dump
and reload.  Adding parentheses doesn't fix it, but there is a reasonably
simple kluge we can use instead: attach a no-op cast, so that the "*" isn't
syntactically at top level anymore.  This makes the printing of such
whole-row Vars a lot more consistent with other Vars, and may indeed fix
more cases than just the reported one; I'm suspicious that cases involving
schema qualification probably didn't work properly before, either.

Per bug report and fix proposal from Abbas Butt, though this patch is quite
different in detail from his.

Back-patch to all supported versions.

1 files changed, 32 insertions, 13 deletions

diff --git a/src/backend/utils/adt/ruleutils.c b/src/backend/utils/adt/ruleutils.c
index 8b44ab17af..50c3e99457 100644
--- a/src/backend/utils/adt/ruleutils.c
+++ b/src/backend/utils/adt/ruleutils.c
@@ -181,7 +181,7 @@ static void get_rule_windowclause(Query *query, deparse_context *context);
 static void get_rule_windowspec(WindowClause *wc, List *targetList,
 					deparse_context *context);
 static void push_plan(deparse_namespace *dpns, Plan *subplan);
-static char *get_variable(Var *var, int levelsup, bool showstar,
+static char *get_variable(Var *var, int levelsup, bool istoplevel,
 			 deparse_context *context);
 static RangeTblEntry *find_rte_by_refname(const char *refname,
 					deparse_context *context);
@@ -2664,11 +2664,12 @@ get_target_list(List *targetList, deparse_context *context,
 		 * "foo.*", which is the preferred notation in most contexts, but at
 		 * the top level of a SELECT list it's not right (the parser will
 		 * expand that notation into multiple columns, yielding behavior
-		 * different from a whole-row Var).  We want just "foo", instead.
+		 * different from a whole-row Var).  We need to call get_variable
+		 * directly so that we can tell it to do the right thing.
 		 */
 		if (tle->expr && IsA(tle->expr, Var))
 		{
-			attname = get_variable((Var *) tle->expr, 0, false, context);
+			attname = get_variable((Var *) tle->expr, 0, true, context);
 		}
 		else
 		{
@@ -3350,13 +3351,20 @@ push_plan(deparse_namespace *dpns, Plan *subplan)
  * the Var's varlevelsup has to be interpreted with respect to a context
  * above the current one; levelsup indicates the offset.
  *
- * If showstar is TRUE, whole-row Vars are displayed as "foo.*";
- * if FALSE, merely as "foo".
+ * If istoplevel is TRUE, the Var is at the top level of a SELECT's
+ * targetlist, which means we need special treatment of whole-row Vars.
+ * Instead of the normal "tab.*", we'll print "tab.*::typename", which is a
+ * dirty hack to prevent "tab.*" from being expanded into multiple columns.
+ * (The parser will strip the useless coercion, so no inefficiency is added in
+ * dump and reload.)  We used to print just "tab" in such cases, but that is
+ * ambiguous and will yield the wrong result if "tab" is also a plain column
+ * name in the query.
  *
- * Returns the attname of the Var, or NULL if not determinable.
+ * Returns the attname of the Var, or NULL if the Var has no attname (because
+ * it is a whole-row Var).
  */
 static char *
-get_variable(Var *var, int levelsup, bool showstar, deparse_context *context)
+get_variable(Var *var, int levelsup, bool istoplevel, deparse_context *context)
 {
 	StringInfo	buf = context->buf;
 	RangeTblEntry *rte;
@@ -3492,10 +3500,16 @@ get_variable(Var *var, int levelsup, bool showstar, deparse_context *context)
 				if (IsA(aliasvar, Var))
 				{
 					return get_variable(aliasvar, var->varlevelsup + levelsup,
-										showstar, context);
+										istoplevel, context);
 				}
 			}
-			/* Unnamed join has neither schemaname nor refname */
+
+			/*
+			 * Unnamed join has neither schemaname nor refname.  (Note: since
+			 * it's unnamed, there is no way the user could have referenced it
+			 * to create a whole-row Var for it.  So we don't have to cover
+			 * that case below.)
+			 */
 			refname = NULL;
 		}
 	}
@@ -3518,13 +3532,18 @@ get_variable(Var *var, int levelsup, bool showstar, deparse_context *context)
 		else
 			appendStringInfoString(buf, quote_identifier(refname));
 
-		if (attname || showstar)
-			appendStringInfoChar(buf, '.');
+		appendStringInfoChar(buf, '.');
 	}
 	if (attname)
 		appendStringInfoString(buf, quote_identifier(attname));
-	else if (showstar)
+	else
+	{
 		appendStringInfoChar(buf, '*');
+		if (istoplevel)
+			appendStringInfo(buf, "::%s",
+							 format_type_with_typemod(var->vartype,
+													  var->vartypmod));
+	}
 
 	return attname;
 }
@@ -4274,7 +4293,7 @@ get_rule_expr(Node *node, deparse_context *context,
 	switch (nodeTag(node))
 	{
 		case T_Var:
-			(void) get_variable((Var *) node, 0, true, context);
+			(void) get_variable((Var *) node, 0, false, context);
 			break;
 
 		case T_Const: